5 highlights from Trump's Antifa roundtable: 'Protest industrial complex'

4. Journalists who cover Antifa blame mainstream media rhetoric for violence

Multiple participants in the roundtable elaborated on Antifa rioters’ motivation for engaging in domestic terror and violently attacking their political opponents.

Daviscourt discussed how she went undercover with Antifa, finding that members of the militant group “believe that ICE agents are the Nazi Gestapo who need to be killed.” 

Savanah Hernandez, another reporter who attended the event, attributed Antifa’s beliefs that motivate them to engage in violence to rhetoric from the mainstream media: “The same media that’s sitting in this room with us has declared all of us at this table Nazis and fascists, and they’ve been doing this for years. This is why Antifa feels emboldened to attack us.”

Julio Rosas, another reporter who covers Antifa, agreed that slanted coverage by mainstream media outlets is one reason why the militant group feels justified in resorting to violence. He noted that MSNBC “ran a story about an operation in Southern California about how a father of three Marines was arrested and they made it seem like they just did it because he’s brown.”

“There’s video of that same man charging at the agents with a weed whacker,” Rosas added. The reporter accused MSNBC of omitting that fact to advance their preferred narrative.